After being found guilty of misconduct for ordering a Muslim woman to remove her veil and criticizing patients’ English language skills, a doctor could be struck off.
A medical tribunal harshly reprimanded Dr Keith Wolverson for his actions during an appointment at Royal Stoke University Hospital in 2018.
Despite Mrs Q’s protests, the GP claimed he requested her to uncover her veil so he could see her lips and better comprehend what she was saying.
Following that, Dr. Wolverson, who also manages a medical practice in Melbourne, Derbyshire, sent an email to colleagues criticizing the patient’s ability to communicate in English.
While there are times when it is appropriate to require a patient to remove their veil, the Medical Practicioner’s Tribunal Service (MTPS) panel stated that this was not one of them.
Dr Wolverson had made ‘inappropriate’ notes on how well his patients spoke English, according to the panel, and her mastery of the language was good.
It found him guilty of serious misconduct and will deliberate on his sentence later this year, with options including suspension or dismissal from the medical register.
Despite declaring to the Mail on Sunday in 2019 that he was going to abandon medicine, Dr Wolverson swore to continue serving his patients when approached by Derbyshire Live in response to the outcome of the latest hearing.
Dr Wolverson, who had been a GP for more than 25 years and had an otherwise spotless record, had been accused of 28 counts of misconduct, 16 of which were related to the appointment with Mrs Q.
A total of 17 were determined to be proven, with 13 of them connected to the May 13, 2018 event involving the veil.
Dr Wolverson urged Mrs Q to remove her veil during a consultation because he said he couldn’t understand her and hoped that seeing her lip movements would assist.
Despite her protests that she didn’t want to remove the veil for religious reasons, he persisted in his proposal, according to the panel.
Dr. Wolverson said she’spoke bad English’ and that he was’struggling to understand her’ and was ‘trying to look at her mouth movements to facilitate conversation’ in an email on May 25, 2018, in response to a complaint from the patient.
Dr Wolverson also refused to speak to Mrs Q’s husband despite his attempts to connect with him, which he subsequently said was because he ‘found his manner confrontational and frightening.’
However, the MPTS concluded in early March that Dr Wolverson had lied during the trial by claiming that he had asked for the veil to be removed because of Mrs Q’s pronounced Stoke-on-Trent accent.
The tribunal stated that they had no trouble comprehending Mrs Q when she came to give testimony.
The General Medical Council, which referred Dr. Wolverson’s case to the MPTS, has no clear instructions on how to assess women wearing full-face veils.
While the chair of the hearing, Duncan Toole, stated that “there would of course be circumstances where this would be entirely appropriate,” it was determined that Dr. Wolverson “had made no attempt to make any form of assessment about whether removing the face veil was necessary or served any purpose.”
‘The tribunal could find little evidence that Dr Wolverson had considered the impact the terms he used in the email may have had on Mrs Q,’ Mr Toole wrote in his judgement.
‘For example, there was no recognition or reflection on how upsetting and offensive it might have been for Mrs Q to be described as speaking “poor English”, when this was not the case.
‘This was particularly so, when Dr Wolverson was in a position of trust and his description was in response to a complaint she had made.
‘The reflective statement focused more on the impact on Dr Wolverson’s private life, than the impact on Mrs Q.
‘This lack of reflection was of concern and demonstrated that Dr Wolverson had very little insight into his conduct.’
Some of the allegations related to his work at Derby Urgent Care Centre while others were from when he worked in the Royal Stoke, both as a locum, or temporary doctor. Dr Wolverson qualified as a medical professional in 1996.
In a hearing from February 24 to March 4, 2022, Dr Wolverson was found to have criticised the English abilities of 15 patients in their medical notes from January to April 2018.
In some of the notes, he said it was ‘not acceptable’ that one patient brought a family member to a consultation who did not speak English, and said it was ‘frankly, not good enough’ when speaking about the mother of another patient’s language ability.
Dr Wolverson will discover his sanction at a hearing scheduled to last from October 12 to October 14.
Derbyshire Live spoke briefly to Dr Wolverson, of Derby Private Doctors aesthetics clinic in the Derbyshire village of Melbourne.
He declined the opportunity to give his side of the story and said that he would continue to treat patients.
Speaking to the Mail on Sunday in 2019, Dr Wolverson said he was thinking about quitting medicine over the investigation into his conduct during the appointment.
He claimed he has ‘politely’ asked the woman to take off the garment for patient safety reasons during a consultation last year because he was unable to hear her explain her sick daughter’s symptoms.
He said he was ‘deeply upset’ when he was told about the investigation and was disillusioned with medicine.
He said: ‘I feel a major injustice has taken place. This is why you are waiting so long to see your GP and doctors are leaving in droves. This country will have no doctors left if we continue to treat them in this manner. I’m deeply upset.
‘A doctor’s quest to perform the very finest consultation for the safety of the patient has been misinterpreted in a duplicitous manner to suggest there has been an act of racism committed. I absolutely no longer want to be a doctor.’